NZ Entrepreneur - February 2017 Vol 4

NEW ZEALAND’S E-MAG FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND BUSINESS OWNERS

FEBRUARY 2017 VOL 4

Get Sales Firing in 90 Days Why There’s No Such Thing as ‘Free’ Web Traffic Startup Watch: Spalk

FOUR STEPS FOR DEALING WITH WELL-MEANING BUT NEGATIVE FAMILY & FRIENDS www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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CONTENTS 4

Four steps for dealing with well-meaning but negative family & friends

12 Get sales firing in 90 days

18 Why there’s no such thing as ‘free’ web traffic

20 Startup Watch: Spalk

23 Quick Fix

CONTACT US

w: www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

ABOUT / Short and sharp, New Zealand Entrepreneur is a free e-magazine delivering thought provoking and enlightening articles, industry news and information to forwardthinking entrepreneurs.

f: www.facebook.com/nzentrepreneur

EDITOR / Richard Liew ART DIRECTOR / Jodi Olsson GROUP EDITOR / Colin Kennedy CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER / Alastair Noble

linkedIn: NZ Entrepreneur t: @NZpreneur

CONTENT ENQUIRIES / Phone Richard on 021 994 136 or email richardl@espiremedia.com ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES / Jennifer on 0274 398 100 or email jenniferl@espiremedia.com WEBSITE / nzentrepreneur.co.nz

www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

MARCH 10 2017 | GRAND MILLENNIUM AUCKLAND

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RUTH BROWN TRADE ME Design the sites that match customers’ brains

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Entrepreneurship

FOUR STEPS FOR DEALING WITH WELL-MEANING BUT NEGATIVE FAMILY & FRIENDS

BY Richard Liew

www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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o you’ve decided to take the plunge and start a business. Well done you!

Having mentally prepared yourself for what lies ahead by researching, reading about and talking with others about what it takes to start a business, you know that ‘success lies on the far side of failure’ and are prepared for the risks and sacrifices it takes to achieve the success you want.

The problem is, it is unlikely that everyone in your life is as excited about your decision as you are, including the people you care most about. In fact, it is likely that some of them will think it’s downright stupid and irresponsible to even contemplate the idea.

Partners, spouses, friends, parents, grandparents, children (if they’re grown), colleagues...you know they love you...so why can’t they be more supportive of your decision?!

YOUR PARTNER

As I’ve mentioned before, telling your loved ones that you’ve decided to start a business is both the hardest and easiest step on your entrepreneurial journey. The hardest because this is the point where you are making a public declaration to the people you love and respect the most, and you want them to support you. The easiest because, well, compared to everything else you’ll have to do after you tell them, it’s a walk in the park.

That is, your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or significant other, is outwardly encouraging but inwardly thinks you’re making a mistake, doubts your ability to make it happen, or is worried about how it will impact your life together. This is such a hard situation. The person you love most, whose opinion you hold in the highest esteem, and who you most want to make proud, has doubts about your business idea and/or your ability to achieve it.

From our personal experiences, and from talking to other entrepreneurs about this, here are some common situations you’re likely to face with well-meaning but negative family and friends.

You may be facing this now. And it’s completely understandable, especially when a couple’s finances and financial future are intertwined.

Especially if there are kids involved.

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Entrepreneurship

Underlying feelings of negativity from your parents towards your business building dreams can... be a little disappointing

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YOUR PARENTS Q: Whose parents enjoy watching their kids go through dangerous and sometimes painful experiences?

A: Hopefully not yours.

Like it or not, most of us come from families who value security and reputation above adventure and ambition. It’s built into our parents’ psyche, as part of their nurturing instinct, to want to protect us from all the painful experiences out there – and this includes the pain of financial hardship, ruin or humiliation as a result of potential business failure.

While they may have been your biggest fans, cheerleaders and encouragers when it came to sports, the arts or other endeavours in your youth, few challenges in adult life are as daunting or have such serious repercussions, as entrepreneurship. www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

While it is rare for parents to be outright discouraging (they still want you to see them as your “#1 fans” after all), it is common for them to be sceptical.

So once you’ve had the “Oh...are you sure that’s what you want?” conversation, it is very common to experience miniinterrogations at every family function or get together. The, “So how’s business (one eyebrow raised) then?” questions from Dad, and equally as many, “Are you eating ok darling?” questions from Mum which you know are parent-speak for, “We love you but what the hell are you doing throwing your life/career/education away like this?!”

While not quite as unnerving as doubt from your significant other, underlying feelings of negativity from your parents towards your business building dreams can nevertheless be a little disappointing.

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YOUR FRIENDS Our friends... where would we be without them? Often we’re even closer to our friends than our family, and in this respect, it’s easy to understand why they may experience the same fears and doubts as our partners and families above.

They say we become like those we hang around with most – if all of a sudden you’re off on this business building trip, what does that mean for your friends?

Hopefully nothing, but it can change things.

Unfortunately, as many entrepreneurs report, with some friends this negativity may start to take on the form of sour grapes; especially when you start showing signs of success, as opposed to fear and concern for your wellbeing.

So, what to do about all this?

STEP ONE: STOP TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE One thing’s for sure, no matter what you say, you’re not going to be able to convince the doubters that it’s a smart idea. We all have different personalities and risk thresholds, and entrepreneurs are proven to have a higher tolerance for risk. That’s why not everyone does it!

So spare yourself the agony and frustration of trying to prove yourself and convince people that it’s a sensible and logical choice. Because logic has nothing to do with the passion, instinct, curiosity or desire that inevitably drives an entrepreneur to take the initial leap.

In fact, the ‘logical’ thing to do is to get a high paying safe, secure job, live on beans and rice for 30 years and buy a property in Auckland. And how boring would the world be if we all did that?

Sure, show them your business plan and financial projections if you feel it might help.

While they may not be convinced you can achieve the numbers you’re planning to hit, it may at least assuage their fears knowing that you’ve got a plan. Be aware, though, that if you do this, you’re most likely just inviting an argument about the ins and outs of your business plan. Remember, ‘a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.’

Those who believe in you will believe in you with or without proof – be grateful for them and stop trying to convince the rest, because the only time they will stop worrying is when they see you succeeding – making money, expanding your business, buying baches, boats and basketball teams. www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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Entrepreneurship

STEP TWO: DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY Remind yourself that the reason people may not be as supportive of your dream as you might hope them to be is that they care about you. If they didn’t care about your well-being, your financial security, your family, or your reputation they wouldn’t be worried about your risk of failure.

So be the bigger person and choose to see it as a sign of their love, rather than seeing it as a sign they don’t believe in you. Say to yourself, “They want me to succeed, but they want me to be safe. I should be more worried if people don’t care.”

As an adult, the nature of your relationship with family and friends is likely to be such that you only spend a bit of time with them every so often. So any negativity from these groups is likely to be sporadic, and in small doses, allowing the entrepreneur to take it in their stride and ‘shake it off’ between visits.

Most likely, you can deal with these wellmeaning but negative vibes without having to fire your friends or divorce your parents. But if it’s a negative partner you’re dealing with, it’s potentially a much more serious problem.

On the one hand, if it’s negativity that stems from worry or doubt about the business idea, it could be a positive thing; the best relationships are those in which partners complement STEP THREE: DECIDE WHETHER THE RELATIONSHIP each other as a team, keeping each other in balance. When one is struggling, the other can IS ONE WHICH YOU CAN LIVE WITH OR NOT be strong. When one is quick to spend, the OK, this is where you need to make some other will save. When one is chasing every new tough decisions. Building a business idea they hear about, the other can be more requires 100% dedication and commitment considered. Yin and yang – stronger together.

– a lot of sacrifice over and above the So even if your partner is not involved in your standard nine to five job – be it time, money, business, if they believe in you, but are only attention. There will be many times when fearful or doubtful about the idea, all’s not you’ll wonder if you’re doing the right thing, lost. Presumably, you are with your partner and many opportunities to give up. because they have personal qualities, skills You would be surprised at how often an or wisdom that you value. So talk openly and encouraging word from a loved one at the right frankly about your goals and plans BEFORE time can help an entrepreneur push through you make the decision. Give them the ability to success. Similarly, pervasive negativity to be involved in your decision-making towards your entrepreneurial aspirations can process, to ask questions, offer suggestions, be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. tell you their concerns. www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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Fear of change and the unknown is understandable, so while your partner may have no clue about business or the idea or industry you want to tackle, hopefully, the more they feel that you are taking their ideas, thoughts and feelings into consideration, the more informed and more supportive they will feel. Announcing out of the blue one day that you’ve already made a decision which will dramatically change your lives, and riding roughshod over their fears and feelings is unlikely to get you the support you want!

Partnerships are a two-way street after all.

Just as you have asked them to share in your life journey, they have also invited you to share in their life journey, and you have agreed. So when you start a business, and you are in a relationship, you are asking your partner to share the risk by default. Give them the courtesy and opportunity to make an informed decision, and you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.

On the other hand, it could be more than simply a case of fear of the unknown or mismatched risk profiles which can potentially be worked through. If it’s a case of a partner consciously or subconsciously not wanting the life you want, not wanting you to grow, or simply trying to control you or your lifestyle, this is a bigger problem.

While you may well have started your relationship with the same goals (financial freedom, nice house, happy family, etc.), the entrepreneurial pathway is entirely different to the comfortable corporate or ‘nine to five’ route with which most people are satisfied. The moment you decide to become an entrepreneur is the moment you are heading off the beaten track. Your path is diverging from the road you were previously on, and as painful as it might be, if your partner cannot or will not be happy to accompany you on this new path, it may be time to reevaluate your relationship.

Ultimately, this is a very personal decision, and no one can tell you what the right thing to do is. Many people place their relationship with their significant other ahead of fulfilling their personal dreams and goals, and who can blame them. After all, what is more important than family and relationships?

If you’re lucky, you will have attracted a partner who shares your goals and dreams, and who understands that it may require a different path to get there. In which case their attitude to your aspirations will be more “Yeah!” and less “Meh!”, just as your attitude to their aspirations will be the same. www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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STEP FOUR: SURROUND YOURSELF WITH POSITIVE fears and opinions define you – even those PEOPLE AND GET ON WITH MAKING PEOPLE PROUD of your nearest and dearest.

The first test and lesson for the entrepreneur Once you’ve made peace with the fact that is to let go of what others think. not everyone will be as excited about your In his excellent book How To Get Rich, Felix choices as you are, your job is to get on with the task at hand and prove them wrong. But Dennis (founder of Dennis Publishing) says, go about it with grace, humility and respect.

“If you cannot bear the thought of causing worry to your family, spouse or lover while you plow a lonely, dangerous road rather than taking the safe option of a regular job, you will never get rich.”

Regardless of whether wealth is one of the drivers of your entrepreneurial aspirations, ultimately what he’s saying is that as an entrepreneur you cannot let other people’s

Remember, when times get tough, it’s these people’s support (and in some cases food, money and shelter) you are going to rely on to get you through. They may not always understand your choices but they are not the enemy. They are your family and friends and they love you. Never forget that in your quest for a life less ordinary!•

Richard Liew is the founder and Editor of NZ Entrepreneur magazine. He is an entrepreneur specialising in sales and marketing and holds a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Finance, from the University of Auckland.

L: Richard Liew T: @nzpreneur www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

Vist:LeadingEdgeGroup.conz

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, l l e s we ceed c u s u yo

Better sales begin with better relationships.

Our proven sales and customer service helps your business thrive by fostering deeper connections between people and brands.

We work behind the scenes to make our partners’ brands shine.

Find out how your sales channel can work better and smarter.

Visit: LeadingEdgeGroup.co.nz

www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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Sales

GET SALES Three FIRING easy things IN 90 DAYS you can do right now

BY Ian Segail

www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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here is no question that in these economically uncertain times, sales leaders will need to get smarter if they are going to keep and grow their existing customer base. Their people will need to be a whole lot more shrewd if they are to win the few opportunities available. That being said, here are three fundamental sales management strategies that, when implemented, will help generate sales traction within the next 90 days.

EASY STRATEGY #1 Your first strategy will seem so simple that you are bound to say to yourself “Is that all there is to it?” Don’t be fooled.

While the strategy below may seem simple, when done, it delivers some amazing results. So don’t ponder the whys and hows, just get on with it!

It has been proven that, when effectively applied, the practice of regular oneon-one sales performance coaching is

the fastest and most efficient vehicle to drive sales productivity, and thereby revenue. One-on-one sales performance coaching is a powerful, time-tested, behaviour-changing, sales acceleration strategy, and is the foundation on which permanent and consistent growth in your sales business is built.

Coaching is one of those critical skills that you must develop if you ever want to achieve maximum output from your sales team. While there are many different processes and expertise you need to get proficient with to be an effective sales performance coach, there are two activities that you can apply now that will have an immediate impact on your sales drive.

The only skills required are those of asking good questions and actively listening to the answers, both of which you already have if you are reasonably successful at selling. You can apply these two practices immediately to begin getting traction with your people. www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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Sales

Here’s all you need to do (and by the way, even if you only do a halfway decent job, you’ll begin to see improvement): Sit down with each of your salespeople either in person or by phone, ABSOLUTELY NO LESS THAN ONCE A FORTNIGHT. Depending on the state of your sales pipeline, you may need to ramp that up to once a week.

During your one-on-one time together: 1. Conduct an IN-DEPTH review of the week/fortnight just gone.

2. Conduct an IN-DEPTH plan of the week/fortnight coming up. are going to see Bob at ABC “So you Co... what have you learned about ABC Company?

Who are all the ‘key

players’?"

• What does your research tell you about the critical issues that ABC may be facing right now?

• What is the evidence that they are facing these issues?

Is there someone other than the key decision-maker you can confirm this with?

• What do you believe the potential impacts of those issues to be?

• What are their current constraints in solving that issue (in relation to time, people, money)?

• Do you know of any current workaround in place that might keep them stuck and unwilling to change?

• What issues are the users of their current system facing? What is our answer to solving the issue?

• What are the current market trends in their area?

• What do we know about other companies that operate in the same space as they do?

• What are ABC’s key strategic initiatives?

• How may we be in a position to help them?

• What questions do you have prepared to elicit needs? How do you plan on positioning the company and what it is we do?

That’s it, that’s all, that’s the lot! I told you it was simple. However, as with most simple things, because they’re easy to do, it’s just as easy not to do them.

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Your job in coaching them in-depth is to ensure that before they invest their time and your money going to see a prospect, they are extremely well prepared.

WHAT DOES IN-DEPTH MEAN?

is the objective of the sales call?

In-depth means just that. You need to unpack the week that the salesperson has just completed. As an example, when prospecting for new business opportunities either with existing customers or new prospects, your salespeople must complete some initial due diligence and be able to answer some or all of the following questions before even fronting up or making the sales call.

This list is by no means exhaustive. It may have left out issues specifically relevant to what it is you sell. However, it’s a great start. Create your pre-call strategy checklist and ensure your salespeople are well prepared before their next sales call.

Having answers to these questions will afford them the best opportunity for success. Your job in coaching them indepth is to ensure that before they invest their time and your money going to see a prospect, they are extremely well prepared.

Imagine if you asked your salespeople some or all of the questions below before a business development call: what information should you bring back from your call, to move this opportunity to the next stage of the sales pathway? What

That is what I mean by in-depth! Can you imagine just how much better prepared your sales people would be to take advantage of the opportunities out there with this kind of in-depth probing?

Think about how many of your salespeople have empty diaries waiting for them to turn on their voicemails and emails to determine where they should invest their time that week. Turn your salespeople into proactive producers by working alongside them to plan the week/fortnight coming up.

If you follow this simple practice for the next ninety days, you will start to see traction you have only ever fantasised about. www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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Sales

EASY STRATEGY #2 Look for sales closest to the bullseye.

Imagine standing front on and facing the circles of a target. Imagine the bullseye.

Right there in the middle is where the money is. The circle just outside the bullseye represents your existing customers; let’s call them As. They are the ones closest to the money. The next circle represents those customers that have bought from you occasionally; let’s call them Bs. The circle just beyond the Bs are your Cs, and they represent those prospective companies you have targeted but have yet to buy from you.

Outside of your Cs, we have the Ds. These are prospects we have yet to consider.

Once again, as simple as this practice may seem, it is often neglected. When we need more sales, where do we go looking? It’s a sad truth that too many salespeople go searching out there in D, E, F, and G land.

It’s important to start looking for business closest to where the money is. Your best sales opportunity is to expand your influence within your A and B customers’ organisations and earn a higher percentage of their business. www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

Your role as sales manager is to help your salespeople identify where you have previously left money on the table. What are the opportunities with your A, B and C companies? How can you expand your influence with them? How can you get them to buy more, more often? Can you pick up some referrals from them? Go work there!

Let your marketing department figure out how to educate, trouble and inform the D, E, F, and G targeted prospects. Let marketing come up with and implement the strategies to move the D, E, F, and G targeted prospects closer to the bullseye.

By the way, if you’re thinking that this is too simple or that you already do this, then let me pose a challenge for you. Take any of your A, B or C accounts and ask your people to answer the questions listed above in Easy Strategy #1. I guarantee there’s work to be done there. Have your people renew old relationships. Have them beat the bushes for new opportunities you have yet to capture with your A, B and C customers. These customers live closest to where the money lives.

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EASY STRATEGY #3 Go to work and re-engineer your current sales process, if you have one. If you don’t, then get one! Research shows that ‘process-centric’ sales teams continue to outperform ‘non-process-centric’ teams for every measurable metric.

Sales team performance and effectiveness have been demonstrated to increase by as much as 40% when sales teams have a clear, proven sales process visible to them. The chances are excellent that if you currently have five salespeople on your team, you will have five different sales processes going on all at once.

What other part of your business runs on multiple different processes?

Imagine running your business with half a dozen different accounting processes, or multiple IT or customer service processes? Sounds silly, doesn’t it? In sales, we do this all the time.

Re-engineering your current selling process is not for the faint-hearted.

It may be advisable that you bring in professional expertise to ensure the greatest success. You may just be too close to your current sales methodology to see the gaps or dysfunction. Having said that, here’s a powerful exercise to complete at your next team meeting.

Firstly get your salespeople to write out the steps of how they sell on a sticky note. One note per step. The exercise itself is illuminating, just to see the differences and gaps.

Then step two, as a group try and identify the steps your buyers go through when selecting a vendor.

Lastly, try and align the way you sell with the way your customers like to buy.

Look for the gaps, and build in systems and processes to bridge them.

So there you have it. Three practical ideas you can implement right now to get sales firing again. Start right away and watch your sales production start to flow again.•

Ian Segail is a leading authority on sales strategy and management, and works as a strategic sales performance coach across a wide variety of industries.

W: www.iansegail.com L: Ian Segail

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Marketing

WHY THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS ‘FREE’ WEB TRAFFIC

BY Luca Catania

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f you are in business online, focus on these two things: driving traffic and converting your traffic into sales. Most

companies work on generating what’s known as paid traffic and ‘free traffic’. However, there is a little known fact about this ‘free

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traffic’. It is a myth that has grown and spread, and it diminishes the truth about each visitor that comes to your site.

Don’t believe this myth another day. Here’s what you need to know about traffic to be successful.

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Roland Mirabueno at the Genius Marketing Summit in Kiev, Ukraine

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS FREE TRAFFIC Catchi’s senior conversion specialist Roland Mirabueno recently spoke at the Genius Marketing Summit in Kiev, Ukraine, where he highlighted the importance of conversion rate optimisation, pinpointing the fact that each visitor to your website is the result of some cost your company incurred.

First, there’s paid traffic where you bid for keyword rankings and score with platforms like Google AdWords. Paid traffic costs you directly but tends to pay off relatively quickly and helps you to gain visibility on search engine result pages.

on a monthly basis, every person who visits your site because of these actions has a cost. Although it’s not as direct or straightforward, it is a calculable cost.

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TRAFFIC OR LOSE So when it comes down to it, you are paying for your website’s traffic, whether in the form of time or money; direct or not.

Each visitor has a value. If you’re not converting your traffic into paying customers, you’re losing out on your investment and wasting time and resources. It’s important to analyse which traffic-driving efforts are On the other hand, there’s organic ‘free’ traffic, which is the traffic you get by providing resulting in conversions so that you can invest more in those and scrap your audience with quality, consistent SEO tactics that aren’t as effective. content. This requires a lot of time, skill, and patience before you’ll start seeing results.

Time is money. Don’t waste your time.

And not only that – often you need to hire a Track your customers and focus on the professional writer to create good content top sources for your business. You’ll be amazed at how much your business can on an ongoing basis; you need someone to grow when you make small continuous manage your social media pages; you need adjustments in the right direction. • an SEO expert to optimise your website, etc.

Whether the costs you incur for driving organic traffic to your site come in the form of outsourcing, hours spent maintaining your site, or the fees you pay an SEO agency

Luca Catania is a conversion rate specialist at Catchi.

L: Luca Catania www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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NEW ZEALAND IS A HOTBED OF ENTREPRENEURIAL GOODNESS EACH WEEK WE PROFILE A STARTUP WE’RE WATCHING ACROSS A RANGE OF INDUSTRIES

Spalk FOUNDERS: Ben Reynolds & Michael Prendergast (CTO)

www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

HQ: Auckland

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The Spalk team met with several partners at CES 2017 in Las Vegas.

Tell us about your business.

Spalk is software that injects and synchronises alternate audio commentary to live sports broadcasts.

Our software solves the age old problem of the regular sports commentators not matching the tastes of the whole audience. With Spalk, sports broadcasters can offer multiple commentary choices for viewers to select from.

We’ve seen great use cases with multilingual and fan commentary on live sports.

We license our API to broadcasters, along with having our own platform on spalk.co for amateur and college sport.

Commentators love us because they can commentate from their laptop and build their own profile and audience.

You can check out a demo video of Spalk on Maori TV’s site here.

Who is your target market?

We’ve got two major customer groups.

1. Broadcasters and Premium Rights Owners. For example, in New Zealand we work closely with Maori TV and are also talking to several of the major sports leagues in the USA. 2. Amateur and college sports. If a club or college is streaming content, Spalk can add commentary to it. We’ve worked with (nearly!) every sports league and University in New Zealand, from cricket and rugby to squash and futsal! We’ve integrated with YouTube, Livestream, uStream and several other major streaming platforms, meaning any live content on the web can be posted to, and commentated, via Spalk.

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Where did the idea come from?

Michael and Ben initially came up with the idea when we started commentating sports games, for fun, using a free internet radio tool in our flat on the weekends.

We quickly built an audience numbering in the thousands and started building a roster of our friends to guest commentate different games.

We soon realised how bad internet radio tools (like Mixlr) are for sports commentary because your audio is up to two minutes out of sync with the live video and you’re competing against the broadcasters.

We went away and built Spalk. Version one could synchronise remote audio to YouTube Live videos, and now we can do the synchronisation and injection on broadcasters’ streams.

Have you started or owned any businesses BEFORE this one?

Ben: I ran a little coffee business when I was 13/14. Mum and dad would drive me out to sports events and I’d make coffee to sell for $3 a pop. I ended up buying a $5k van to store the machine and a few professionally done signs. I wouldn’t quite call it a proper business, but I learnt a lot about my way of doing business.

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W: F:

What are your biggest unique selling points?

• Viewers can pick a commentator to suit any taste, language or style.

• We do the synchronisation in the client (browser or mobile app), so there is no messy server-side integration.

• Our partners have seen average increases in live audience sizes of >70%!

What are you most proud of?

1. We’ve built a team of five young people who are changing the game when it comes to live sports broadcasting.

2. Maori TV integration – it’s fantastic to be able to offer English, Te Reo and other language commentaries on broadcast level content. It opens up so many new audiences to sport.

3. Raising our Seed Funding Round (to be announced end of February!)

4. Being a part of the Vodafone Xone accelerator program. It opened up a lot of doors for us and was great to be able to partner with Vodafone on a number of projects.

What is the biggest entrepreneur lesson you would like to share with other Kiwis thinking of starting their own business?

You make your own luck – so the more times you put yourself in the position to win, the more likely you are to taste success.•

spalk.co www.facebook.com/sportscommentary

Quick Fix

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QUICK FIX Disconnect to get things done

I

n this world of ubiquitous instant communication, it is easy to fall into the trap of being tethered to technology – our smart phones, iPads and email. The temptation to immediately respond to communication, and the inferred expectation that we will respond, is likely to be consuming your time, and compromising your productivity.

If you have some serious prospecting to do, follow ups to make or a key proposal to complete in the next hour, then don’t be distracted by technology.

Turn your phone off, shutdown your email, and don’t feel guilty about completely focusing on your task.•

www.nzentrepreneur.co.nz

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“What we can do is not important. What we should do is more important.”

Pranav Mistry, Ted Talk WATCH IT HERE: ‘The Thrilling Potential of Sixth Sense Technology’

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